A Taste Of Reality

Yep, that's right! I am running an old generation, Intel P4 Processor clocked at 3 Ghz. It's a single core processor and in this modern age when we have real fast processors like Quad Core, I am still on an old single core processor. But hey, that's my baby and he's going to turn 7 years old this October :)

But being a Security Enthusiast, I gotta invest more on technology. One of the main reasons I haven't been able to do that is, due to instability in my life. I am relocating to a new place so this is not the right time for me to invest. But I already have a long list of stuff to buy. Among the processors, it's going to be an Intel Core i7 2600k. And an Extreme GPU for which I have the budget.

But before I decide the vendor of GPU, I have to decide, whether I want CUDA or OpenCL. Based on that it's going to be either, Nvidia GTX 590 or an ATI Radeon 6970.

Anyway, this topic is about, Decryption Processes heating up my Baby! yep! I have accidentally caused my machine to shutdown several times by running the Decryption Process for a long duration at a stretch. It's max operating temperature according to Intel is somewhere around 75 degrees. Which means, it can operate safely at that temperature. Also, the new processors are designed in such a way, that they can slow themselves down to bring down the temperature.

In any case, making my machine shutdown as a result of heating up beyond operating limits is not good. It reduces the lifeline of it. So, I need something to monitor my CPU/Motherboard/HDD temperature. I got Everest Home Edition for this purpose. It's a freeware and really good to quickly monitor some essential performance parameters of your PC.

Grab it from here: hxxp://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Everest-Home-Edition.shtml

If you have an Intel Core Based Processor, then you can go for Realtemp. Pentium 4 Processors are not supported by it.

Grab it from here: hxxp://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

There are sensors on the Core Processors called DTS (Digital Thermal Sensors) which are probed by this software to gather statistics of several parameters. Of the key significance to us are:

- Motherboard temperature
- CPU
- HDD
- Cooling Fan Speed

I have observed on my Intel P4, 3 Ghz processor, that anything below 70 degrees is safe. So, I usually run the decryption process at a stretch till the temperature doesn't hit that mark. If it does, I stop the process for a while.

The Cabinet which houses all these components doesn't have a proper cooling mechanism. Who cared much about the cooling mechanism anyway, 7 years back? :D

Now, you have cabinets with support for upto 6 fans. Yes, it makes sense, when you have power hungry components like Nvidia GTX GPUs and Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, you indeed need a proper cooling mechanism.

For now, I use external cooling, Bringing down the room temperature does have some effect on the processor temperature. So, I have to turn on the fan in my room at max speed while the decryption process runs.

This is one of the key reasons, I have caught the cold *sneezes*

But I have done a considerable amount of research on using JTR to crack MD5 and SHA-1 hashes, both raw and salted.

I have come up with some effective and quick ways to crack many hashes using JTR!

Cracked: 70994 hashes which includes a mixture of DES, raw-MD5, raw-sha1, SHA-1 Salted (SMF and VBulletin), MD5 (Unix) hashes.

That's a good result considering I am running my JTR on a P4 processor.

Listening Now: Tycho - Sunrise Projector